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I have been thinking over the past few years how this period of history will be referred to. If I cast my historical eye backwards I see the Age of Enlightenment, or Reason as it is also known. This period of brilliant light and thought preceded the scientific revolution which saw many great innovations and discoveries which had us all heading closer and closer to the stupidity we now find ourselves surrounded by.
What I find particularly interesting about the Age of Enlightenment is how the French Revolution occurred in the middle of it. One could easily see this overthrowing of the Old Regime as an attack by the masses against the elite but, instead, it was a replacement of the privileged by the less fortunate, free thinking, who then took over the mantle of control of the unthinking masses. Same old, same old just with different clothing. (More interesting is the fact that religion didn’t get thrown out at this stage. So, I guess, Enlightenment only went so far.)
The Industrial Revolution followed quickly on the heels of the Enlightenment and, as a result of this sort of scientific push of the human need for discovery and control, computers led us into an undefined (and possibly still happening) Computer Age.
(I should add that these labels and times are not exact and may not be widely held as true outside this somewhat ranty blog post.)
Now, of course, AI is seemingly taking over the functions that once were the preserve of the human brain meaning the need to think is vanishing with its growth. Mind you, every time I am forced to interact with an online AI bot, I eventually manage to befuddle it enough to get passed on to a human operator who still knows the answers to the questions that have baffled the computer code.
A brief look around the world, at the proliferation of far right politics, seems to imply that the everyday person on the street wants nothing to do with how things are run. These people believe the lies printed and the assertions that we are living in a post truth world that warms us with its lies.
Stupid men in stupid balaclavas stop people going on holiday because they, incorrectly assume their anonymous protests will have any effect on stopping illegal immigration. Stupid men in stupid uniforms indiscriminately kill people because they believe in an equally but differently flavoured stupid myth to theirs.
I have often said that being happy is the most important thing. I used to think it was quite easy to be happy and a lot more work to be miserable. I have to change my opinion of this. Obviously, people have to work hard to overcome the surrounding fence of stupidity, to break out of the dimness and see the light of happiness just outside this Garden of Dark.
I fear this isn’t going to happen, as long as human beings put nationalism, religion, money, control and all the other little bits of stupidity ahead of simply existing, then the human race will die out long before it learns how to live on this planet.
I am old, it will not be my problem, but, really, what are parents doing that will help their children and future generations? Precious little, it seems. Well, apart from the skills required to hate, destroy and tug their forelocks to the manipulative bastards laughing at their ignorance.
Welcome to the Dim Age. Possibly the final age of the human race.
PS: I started writing this in 2017.
